Billy Beattie
William "Billy" Beattie (date of birth unknown) was an Irish-American mobster and member of New York's notorious Irish mob The Westies. Biography Beattie was an altar boy as a young man but would later become a career criminal. He was an enforcer in Mickey Spillane's gang at first, but after Spillane and the mafia began feuding over control of the Jabob K. Javitz Center, Billy had doubts about staying in Spillane's gang. When Jimmy Coonan offered Beattie a place in his gang, Beattie accepted. join the Westies. He became a lieutenant to Jimmy Coonan and operated primarily in narcotics. Beattie and other Westies also had a no-show jobs provided to them through their connections in the Genovese and Gambino crime family. Beattie witnessed the downfall of the Westies as it's members began to abuse drugs and to turn on each other. He claimed that Coonan and Edward Cummiskey once held him at gun point as he sat in a bathtub taking a bath, silencers pointed at his head, and forced Beattie to sell out Paddy Dugan. Coonan and Cummiskey would stay at the apartment, waiting for Dugan to come to the apartment to murder and dismember him. He also witnessed but didn't participate in many other vicious crimes committed by fellow Westies gangsters. Beattie had owed Coonan a lot of money, but Beattie hadn't paid any of them. Beattie believed that Coonan had put a contract out on him. His suspicion would be proven correct when Mickey Featherstone came to Beattie in Central Park and said that Coonan had given him the order to kill Billy. Mickey refused, however, and told Billy that he wouldn't kill him, and Mickey left. Beattie mulled over his options and realized he could either wait to be killed, which he surmised would eventually happen as he couldn't hide forever, or turn to the government and become a witness, which he did. Westies Meeting with "Big Paul" Beattie recounted how Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone were once summoned to a meeting with Paul Castellano, boss of the Gambino crime family who wanted to meet the Westies leaders at a restaurant in Manhattan to arrange a partnership with them and to talk to them about they're brash and wild manner of operating. Coonan and Featherstone however were skeptical about the meeting and thought it could have been a setup to have them killed. So Coonan arranged for Beattie and the rest of the Gang to hold up at an apartment close to the restaurant. They had arranged for a waiter at the restaurant to call the gang if Coonan and Featherstone should be taken away or if trouble was to break out. Should the waiter had called Beattie and the rest of the Westies, they had orders from Coonan to go in and to kill everybody in the restaurant. Beattie however, would later relate that when he and the rest of the Westies members met at the apartment they ended up having a "little party", smoking marijuana and snorting cocaine. They had all gotten so high that even if they had been called to aid Coonan and Featherstone, they probably wouldn't have even answered the phone. In Popular Culture A similar version of the Castellano meeting was portrayed in the film "State of Grace" starring Sean Penn as an undercover cop posing as a member of The Westies. Beattie has also appeared in at least two made for television documentary's on The Westies, including one for the Bio Channel. Category:The westies Category:Rats Category:Irish Gangsters